Theophilus Cibber - The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753)

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27. The Grateful Servant, a Tragi-Comedy, acted at a private house in
Drury Lane, 1655.

28. The Gentleman of Venice, a Tragi-Comedy, acted at a private house
in Salisbury Court. Plot taken from Gayron's Notes on Don Quixote.

29. The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for Achilles's Armour, a
Masque, 1658. It is taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis, b. xiii.

30. Cupid and Death, a Masque, 1658.

30 [sic]. Love Tricks, or the School of Compliments, a Comedy, acted by the
Duke of York's servants in little Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, 1667.

31. The Constant Maid, or Love will find out the Way, a Comedy, acted
at the New House called the Nursery, in Hatton Garden, 1667.

33. The Opportunity, a Comedy, acted at the private house in Drury
Lane by her Majesty's servants; part of this play is taken from
Shakespear's Measure for Measure.

34. The Wedding, a Comedy, acted at the Phaenix in Drury Lane.

35. A Bird in a Cage, a Comedy, acted in Drury Lane.

36. The Coronation, a Comedy. This play is printed with Beaumont's and
Fletcher's.

37. The Cardinal, a Tragedy, acted at a private house in Black Fryars.

38. The Triumph of Peace, a Masque, presented before the King and
Queen at Whitehall, 1633, by the Gentlemen of the Four Inns of Court.

We shall present the reader with a quotation taken from a comedy of
his, published in Dodsley's collection of old plays, called A Bird in
a Cage, p. 234. Jupiter is introduced thus speaking,

Let the music of the spheres,
Captivate their mortal ears;
While Jove descends into this tower,
In a golden streaming shower.
To disguise him from the eye
Of Juno, who is apt to pry
Into my pleasures: I to day
Have bid Ganymede go to play,
And thus stole from Heaven to be
Welcome on earth to Danae.
And see where the princely maid,
On her easy couch is laid,
Fairer than the Queen of Loves,
Drawn about with milky doves.

Footnotes:
1. Athen. Oxon. p 376
2. Wood, ubi supra.

* * * * *

JAMES HOWEL, Esq;

Was born at Abernant in Carmarthenshire, the place where his father
was minister, in the year 1594[1]. Howel himself, in one of his
familiar epistles, says, that his ascendant was that hot constellation
of Cancer about the middle of the Dog Days. After he was educated in
grammar learning in the free school of Hereford, he was sent to Jesus
College in the beginning of 1610, took a degree in arts, and then
quitted the university. By the help of friends, and a small sum of
money his father assisted him with, he travelled for three years into
several countries, where he improved himself in the various languages;
some years after his return, the reputation of his parts was so great,
that he was made choice of to be sent into Spain, to recover of the
Spanish monarch a rich English ship, seized by the Viceroy of Sardinia
for his master's use, upon some pretence of prohibited goods being
found in it.

During his absence, he was elected Fellow of Jesus College, 1623, and
upon his return, was patronized by Emanuel, lord Scroop, Lord
President of the North, and by him was made his secretary[2]. As he
resided in York, he was, by the Mayor and Aldermen of Richmond, chose
a Burgess for their Corporation to sit in that Parliament, that began
at Westminster in the year 1627. Four years after, he went secretary
to Robert, earl of Leicester, ambassador extraordinary from England to
the King of Denmark, before whom he made several Latin speeches,
shewing the occasion of their embassy, viz. to condole the death of
Sophia, Queen Dowager of Denmark, Grandmother to Charles I. King of
England.

Our author enjoyed many beneficial employments, and at length, about
the beginning of the civil war, was made one of the clerks of the
council, but being extravagant in his temper, all the money he got was
not sufficient to preserve him from a Jail. When the King was forced
from the Parliament, and the Royal interest declined, Howel was
arrested; by order of a certain committee, who owed him no good-will,
and carried prisoner to the Fleet; and having now nothing to depend
upon but his wits, he was obliged to write and translate books for a
livelihood, which brought him in, says Wood, a comfortable
subsistance, during his stay there; he is the first person we have met
with, in the course of this work, who may be said to have made a trade
of authorship, having written no less than 49 books on different
subjects.

In the time of the rebellion, we find Howel tampering with the
prevailing power, and ready to have embraced their measures; for which
reason, at the reiteration, he was not contin[u]ed in his place of
clerk to the council, but was only made king's historiographer, being
the first in England, says Wood, who bore that title; and having no
very beneficial employment, he wrote books to the last.

He had a great knowledge in modern histories, especially in those of
the countries in which he had travelled, and he seems, by his letters,
to have been no contemptible politician: As to his poetry, it is
smoother, and more harmonious, than was very common with the bards of
his time.

As he introduced the trade of writing for bread, so he also is charged
with venal flattery, than which nothing can be more ignoble and base.
To praise a blockhead's wit because he is great, is too frequently
practised by authors, and deservedly draws down contempt upon them. He
who is favoured and patronized by a great man, at the expence of his
integrity and honour, has paid a dear price for the purchase, a
miserable exchange, patronage for virtue, dependance for freedom.

Our author died the beginning of November, 1666, and was buried on the
North side of the Temple church.

We shall not trouble the reader with an enumeration of all the
translations and prose works of this author; the occasion of his being
introduced here, is, his having written

Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, consisting of a Masque and a Comedy,
[f]or the Great Royal Ball, acted in Paris six times by the King in
person, the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of York, with other Noblemen; also
by the Princess Royal, Henrietta Maria, Princess of Conti, &c. printed
in 4to. 1654, and addressed to the Marchioness of Dorchester. Besides
this piece, his Dodona's Grove, or Vocal Forest, is in the highest
reputation.

His entertaining letters, many of whom were written to the greatest
personages in England, and some in particular to Ben Johnson, were
first published in four volumes; but in 1737, the tenth edition of
them was published in one volume, which is also now become scarce.
They are interspersed with occasional verses; from one of these little
pieces we shall select the following specimen of this author's
poetical talent.

On the Author's Valentine, Mrs. METCALF.

Could I charm the queen of love,
To lend a quill of her white dove;
Or one of Cupid's pointed wings
Dipt in the fair Caftalian Springs;
Then would I write the all divine
Perfections of my Valentine.

As 'mongst, all flow'rs the Rose excells,
As Amber 'mongst the fragrant'st smells,
As 'mongst all minerals the Gold,
As Marble 'mongst the finest mold,
As Diamond 'mongst jewels bright
As Cynthia 'mongst the lesser lights[3]:
So 'mongst the Northern beauties shine,
So far excels my Valentine.

In Rome and Naples I did view
Faces of celestial hue;
Venetian dames I have seen many,
(I only saw them, truck'd not any)
Of Spanish beauties, Dutch and French,
I have beheld the quintessence[3]:
Yet saw I none that could out-shine,
Or parallel my Valentine.

Th' Italians they are coy and quaint.
But they grosly daub and paint;
The Spanish kind, and apt to please,
But fav'ring of the same disease:
Of Dutch and French some few are comely,
The French are light, the Dutch are homely.
Let Tagus, Po, the Loire and Rhine
Then veil unto my Valentine.

Footnotes:
1. Langbaine's Lives of the Poets.
2. Athen. Oxon. p. 281. vol. ii.
3. Bad rhimes were uncommon with the poets of Howel's time.

* * * * *

Sir RICHARD FANSHAW

Was the youngest, and tenth son of Sir Henry Fanshaw of Ware-park in
Hertfordshire; he was born in the year 1607, and was initiated in
learning by the famous Thomas Farnaby. He afterwards compleated his
studies in the university of Cambridge, and from thence went to travel
into foreign countries, by which means he became a very accomplished
gentleman. In 1635 he was patronized by King Charles I. on account of
his early and promising abilities; he took him into his service, and
appointed him resident at the court of Spain[1]. During his embassy
there, his chief business was, to demand reparation and punishment of
some free-booters, who had taken ships from the English, and to
endeavour the restoration of amity, trade and commerce.

When the civil war broke out, he returned to England, having
accomplished the purposes of his embassy abroad, and attached himself
with the utmost zeal to the Royal Standard; and during those
calamitous times was intrusted with many important matters of state.

In 1644, attending the court at Oxford, the degree of Doctor of Civil
Laws was conferred upon him[2], and the reputation of his parts every
day increasing, he was thought a proper person to be secretary to
Charles, Prince of Wales, whom he attended into the Western parts of
England, and from thence into the Isles of Scilly and Jersey.

In 1648 he was appointed treasurer of the navy, under the command of
Prince Rupert, in which office he continued till the year 1650, when
he was created a baronet by King Charles II. and sent envoy
extraordinary to the court of Spain. Being recalled thence into
Scotland, where the King then was, he served there in quality of
secretary of state, to the satisfaction of all parties,
notwithstanding he refused to take the covenant engagements, which
Charles II. forced by the importunity of the Presbyterians, entered
into, with a resolution to break them. In 1651 he was made prisoner at
the battle of Worcester and committed to close custody in London,
where he continued, 'till his confinement introduced a very dangerous
sickness; he then had liberty granted him, upon giving bail, to go for
the recovery of his health, into any place he should chuse, provided
he stirred not five miles from thence, without leave from the
Parliament.

In February, 1659, he repaired to the King at Breda, who knighted him
the April following. Upon his Majesty's reiteration, it was expected,
from his great services, and the regard the King had for him, that he
would have been made secretary of state, but at that period there were
so many people's merits to repay, and so great a clamour for
preferment, that Sir Richard was disappointed, but had the place of
master of requests conferred on him, a station, in those times, of
considerable profit and dignity.

On account of his being a good Latin scholar, he was also made a
secretary for that tongue[3]. In 1661, being one of the burgesses for
the university of Cambridge, he was sworn a privy counsellor for
Ireland, and having by his residence in foreign parts, qualified
himself for public employment, he was sent envoy extraordinary to
Portugal, with a dormant commission to the ambassador, which he was to
make use of as occasion should require. Shortly after, he was
appointed ambassador to that court, where he negotiated the marriage
between his master King Charles II. and the Infanta Donna Catharina,
daughter to King John VI. and towards the end of the same year he
returned to England. We are assured by Wood, that in the year 1662, he
was sent again ambassador to that court, and when he had finished his
commission, to the mutual satisfaction of Charles II. and Alphonso
King of Portugal, being recalled in 1663, he was sworn one of his
Majesty's Privy Council. In the beginning of the year 1644 he was sent
ambassador to Philip IV. King of Spain, and arrived February 29 at
Cadiz, where he met with a very extraordinary and unexpected
salutation, and was received with some circumstances of particular
esteem. It appears from one of Sir Richard's letters, that this
distinguishing respect was paid him, not only on his own, but on his
master's account; and in another of his letters he discovers the
secret why the Spaniard yielded him, contrary to his imperious proud
nature, so much honour, and that is, that he expected Tangier and
Jamaica to be restored to him by England, which occasioned his arrival
to be so impatiently longed for, and magnificently celebrated. During
his residence at this court King Philip died, September 17, 1665,
leaving his son Charles an infant, and his dominions under the regency
of his queen, Mary Anne, daughter of the emperor Ferdinand III. Sir
Richard taking the advantage of his minority, put the finishing hand
to a peace with Spain, which was sufficiently tired and weakened with
a 25 years war, for the recovery of Portugal, which had been
dismembered from the Spanish crown in 1640; the treaty of peace was
signed at Madrid December 6, 1665. About the 14th of January
following, his excellency took a journey into Portugal, where he staid
till towards the end of March; the design of his journey certainly was
to effect an accommodation between that crown and Spain, which however
was not produced till 1667, by the interposition of his Britannic
Majesty. Our author having finished his commission was preparing for
his return to England, when June 4, 1666, he was seized at Madrid with
a violent fever, which put an end to his valuable life, the 16th of
the same month, the very day he intended to set out for England: his
body being embalmed, it was conveyed by his lady, and all his
children, then living, by land to Calais, and so to London, whence
being carried to All Saints church in Hertford, it was deposited in
the vault of his father-in-law, Sir John Harrison. The Author of the
Short Account of his Life, prefixed to his letters, says, 'that he was
remarkable for his meekness, sincerity, humanity and piety, and also
was an able statesman and a great scholar, being in particular a
compleat master of several modern languages, especially the Spanish,
which he spoke and wrote with as much advantage, as if he had been a
native.' By his lady, eldest daughter of Sir John Harrison, he had six
sons, and eight daughters, whereof only one son and four daughters
survived him.

The following is an account of his works,

1. An English Translation in Rhyme, of the celebrated Italian
Pastoral, called Il Pastor Fido, or the Faithful Shepherd, written
originally by Battista Guarini, printed in London, 1644 in 4to. and
1664 8vo.

2. A Translation from English into Latin Verse, of the Faithful
Shepherders, a Pastoral, written originally by John Fletcher, Gent.
London, 1658.

3. In the octavo edition of the Faithful Shepherd, Anno 1664, are
inserted the following Poems of our author, viz. 1st, An Ode upon the
Occasion of his Majesty's Proclamation, 1630, commanding the Gentry to
reside upon their Estates in the Country. 2d, A Summary Discourse of
the Civil Wars of Rome, extracted from the best Latin Writers in Prose
and Verse. 3d, An English Translation of the Fourth Book of Virgil's
AEneid on the Loves of Dido and AEneas. 4th, Two Odes out of Horace,
relating to the Civil Wars of Rome, against covetous, rich Men.

4. He translated out of Portuguese into English, The Lusiad, or
Portugal's Historical Poem, written originally by Luis de Camoens,
London, 1655, &c. folio.

After his decease, namely, in 1671, were published these two
posthumous pieces of his in 4to, Querer per solo Querer, To Love only
for Love's sake, a Dramatic Romance, represented before the King and
Queen of Spain, and Fiestas de Aranjuez, Festivals at Aranjuez: both
written originally in Spanish, by Antonio de Mendoza, upon occasion of
celebrating the Birth-day of King Philip IV. in 1623, at Aranjuez;
they were translated by our author in 1654, during his confinement at
Taukerley-park in Yorkshire, which uneasy situation induced him to
write the following stanzas on this work, which are here inserted, as
a specimen of his versification.

Time was, when I, a pilgrim of the seas,
When I 'midst noise of camps, and courts disease,
Purloin'd some hours to charm rude cares with verse,
Which flame of faithful shepherd did rehearse.

But now restrain'd from sea, from camp, from court,
And by a tempest blown into a port;
I raise my thoughts to muse on higher things,
And eccho arms, and loves of Queens and Kings.

Which Queens (despising crowns and Hymen's band)
Would neither men obey, nor men command:
Great pleasure from rough seas to see the shore
Or from firm land to hear the billows roar.

We are told that he composed several other things remaining still in
manuscript, which he had not leisure to compleat; even some of the
printed pieces have not all the finishing so ingenious an author could
have bestowed upon them; for as the writer of his Life observes,
'being, for his loyalty and zeal to his Majesty's service, tossed from
place to place, and from country to country, during the unsettled
times of our anarchy, some of his Manuscripts falling into unskilful
hands, were printed and published without his knowledge, and before he
could give them the last finishing strokes.' But that was not the case
with his Translation of the Pastor Fido, which was published by
himself, and applauded by some of the best judges, particularly Sir
John Denham, who after censuring servile translators, thus goes on,

A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes, these the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

Footnotes:
1. Short Account of Sir Richard Fanshaw, prefixed to his Letters.
2. Wood, Fast. ed. 1721, vol. ii. col. 43, 41.
3. Wood, ubi supra.

* * * * *

ABRAHAM COWLEY

Was the son of a Grocer, and born in London, in Fleet-street, near the
end of Chancery Lane, in the year 1618. His mother, by the interest of
her friends, procured him to be admitted a King's scholar in
Westminster school[1]; his early inclination to poetry was occasioned
by reading accidentally Spencer's Fairy Queen, which, as he himself
gives an account, 'used to lye in his mother's parlour, he knew not by
what accident, for she read no books but those of devotion; the
knights, giants, and monsters filled his imagination; he read the
whole over before he was 12 years old, and was made a poet, as
immediately as a child is made an eunuch.'

In the 16th year of his age, being still at Westminster school, he
published a collection of poems, under the title of Poetical Blossoms,
in which there are many things that bespeak a ripened genius, and a
wit, rather manly than puerile. Mr. Cowley himself has given us a
specimen in the latter end of an ode written when he was but 13 years
of age. 'The beginning of it, says he, is boyish, but of this part
which I here set down, if a very little were corrected, I should not
be much ashamed of it.' It is indeed so much superior to what might be
expected from one of his years, that we shall satisfy the reader's
curiosity by inserting it here.

IX.

This only grant me, that my means may lye,
Too low for envy, for contempt too high:
Some honour I would have;
Not from great deeds, but good alone,
The unknown are better than ill known,
Rumour can ope the grave:
Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.

X.

Books should, not business, entertain the light
And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night:
My house a cottage, more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all my use, no luxury:
My garden painted o'er
With nature's hand, not art, and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine Field.

XI.

Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race;
And in this true delight,
These unbought sports, that happy state,
I could not fear; nor wish my fate;
But boldly say, each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them: I have lived to-day.

It is remarkable of Mr. Cowley, as he himself tells us, that he had
this defect in his memory, that his teachers could never bring him to
retain the ordinary rules of grammar, the want of which, however, he
abundantly supplied by an intimate acquaintance with the books
themselves, from whence those rules had been drawn. In 1636 he was
removed to Trinity College in Cambridge, being elected a scholar of
that house[2]. His exercises of all kinds were highly applauded, with
this peculiar praise, that they were fit, not only for the obscurity
of an academical life, but to have made their appearance on the true
theatre of the world; and there he laid the designs, and formed the
plans of most of the masculine, and excellent attempts he afterwards
happily finished. In 1638 he published his Love's Riddle, written at
the time of his being a scholar in Westminster school, and dedicated
by a copy of verses to Sir Kenelm Digby. He also wrote a Latin Comedy
entitled Naufragium Joculare, or the Merry Shipwreck. The first
occasion of his entering into business, was, an elegy he wrote on the
death of Mr. William Harvey, which introduced him to the acquaintance
of Mr. John Harvey, the brother of his deceased friend, from whom he
received many offices of kindness through the whole course of his
life[3]. In 1643, being then master of arts, he was, among many
others, ejected his college, and the university; whereupon, retiring
to Oxford, he settled in St. John's College, and that same year, under
the name of a scholar of Oxford, published a satire entitled the
Puritan and the Papist. His zeal in the Royal cause, engaged him in
the service of the King, and he was present in many of his Majesty's
journies and expeditions; by this means he gained an acquaintance and
familiarity with the personages of the court and of the gown, and
particularly had the entire friendship of my lord Falkland, one of the
principal secretaries of state.

During the heat of the civil war, he was settled in the family of the
earl of St. Alban's, and accompanied the Queen Mother, when she was
obliged to retire into France. He was absent from his native country,
says Wood, about ten years, during which time, he laboured in the
affairs of the Royal Family, and bore part of the distresses inflicted
upon the illustrious Exiles: for this purpose he took several
dangerous journies into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, and
elsewhere, and was the principal instrument in maintaining a
correspondence between the King and his Royal Consort, whose letters
he cyphered and decyphered with his own hand.

His poem called the Mistress was published at London 1647, of which he
himself says, "That it was composed when he was very young. Poets
(says he) are scarce thought free men of their company, without paying
some duties and obliging themselves to be true to love. Sooner or
later they must all pass through that trial, like some Mahometan
monks, who are bound by their order once at least in their life, to
make a pilgrimage to Mecca. But we must not always make a judgment of
their manners from their writings of this kind, as the Romanists
uncharitably do of Beza for a few lascivious sonnets composed by him
in his youth. It is not in this sense that poetry is said to be a kind
of painting: It is not the picture of the poet, but of things, and
persons imagined by him. He may be in his practice and disposition a
philosopher, and yet sometimes speak with the softness of an amorous
Sappho. I would not be misunderstood, as if I affected so much gravity
as to be ashamed to be thought really in love. On the contrary, I
cannot have a good opinion of any man who is not at least capable of
being so."

What opinion Dr. Sprat had of Mr. Cowley's Mistress, appears by the
following passage extracted from his Life of Cowley. "If there needed
any excuse to be made that his love-verses took up so great a share in
his works, it may be alledged that they were composed when he was very
young; but it is a vain thing to make any kind of apology for that
sort of writing. If devout or virtuous men will superciliously forbid
the minds of the young to adorn those subjects about which they are
most conversant, they would put them out of all capacity of performing
graver matters, when they come to them: for the exercise of all men's
wit must be always proper for their age, and never too much above it,
and by practice and use in lighter arguments, they grow up at last to
excell in the most weighty. I am not therefore ashamed to commend Mr.
Cowley's Mistress. I only except one or two expressions, which I wish
I could have prevailed with those that had the right of the other
edition to have left out; but of all the rest, I dare boldly
pronounce, that never yet was written so much on a subject so
delicate, that can less offend the severest rules of morality. The
whole passion of love is intimately described by all its mighty train
of hopes, joys and disquiets. Besides this amorous tenderness, I know
not how in every copy there is something of more useful knowledge
gracefully insinuated; and every where there is something feigned to
inform the minds of wise men, as well as to move the hearts of young
men or women."

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